A revolutionary technique gives scientists an unparalleled close-up view inside fleeting particles called excitons. In a world-first, researchers from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) have captured an image showing the internal orbits, or spatial distribution, of particles in an exciton – a goal that had eluded scientists for almost a century. Excitons are excited states of matter found within semiconductors – a class of materials that are key to many modern technological devices, such as…

Astronomers have discovered a pulsar – a dense and rapidly spinning neutron star sending radio waves into the cosmos–using a low-frequency radio telescope in outback Australia. The pulsar was detected with the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope, in Western Australia’s remote Mid West region. It’s the first time scientists have discovered a pulsar with the MWA but they believe it will be the first of many. The finding is a sign of things to come from the multi-billion-dollar Square Kilometre…

Making the speed of electronic technology as fast as possible is a central aim of contemporary materials research. The key components of fast computing technologies are transistors: switching devices that turn electrical currents on and off very quickly as basic steps of logic operations. In order to improve our knowledge about ideal transistor materials, physicists are constantly trying to determine new methods to accomplish such extremely fast switches. Researchers from the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in…

University at Buffalo tech can identify machines by their unique ‘hot end,’ could aid intellectual property, security. 3D printing is transforming everything from fashion and health care to transportation and toys. But this rapidly evolving technology, also known as additive manufacturing, can threaten national security and intellectual property rights. To reduce illicit use of 3D printers, Zhanpeng Jin, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University at Buffalo, is developing a way to track…

Super-massive black holes are found at the centers of many galaxies. But all efforts to detect them directly suffer from the fact that no information from their interior can reach us directly. Now, Professor Anton Zensus, director at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn and founding chairman of the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration (EHT), has proposed an independent method to filter out those explanations from the existing ones that are viable. At the same time, this method…

Discovery a ‘coup’ in astrophysics involving observations with nine instruments. A team of astronomers including Carnegie’s Alycia Weinberger and former-Carnegie postdoc Meredith MacGregor, now an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, spotted an extreme outburst, or flare, from the Sun’s nearest neighbor–the star Proxima Centauri. Their work, which could help guide the search for life beyond our Solar System, is published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Proxima Centauri is a “red dwarf” with about one-eighth the mass of…

Resonant-tunneling diodes are used in high-frequency oscillators, wave emitters and detectors, logic gates, photodetectors, and optoelectronic circuits. The study was a collaboration between Brazilian and German researchers. Diodes are widely used electronic devices that act as one-way switches for current. A well-known example is the LED (light-emitting diode), but there is a special class of diodes designed to make use of the phenomenon known as “quantum tunneling”. Called resonant-tunneling diodes (RTDs), they are among the fastest semiconductor devices and are…

Technology could avert capacity crunch by enhancing bandwidth while reducing energy consumption. Fiber optic technology is the holy grail of high-speed, long-distance telecommunications. Still, with the continuing exponential growth of internet traffic, researchers are warning of a capacity crunch. In AVS Quantum Science, by AIP Publishing, researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Maryland show how quantum-enhanced receivers could play a critical role in addressing this challenge. The scientists developed a method to enhance…

Up to now, oscillator free-electron lasers have only reached emission wavelengths down to 176.4 nanometers. Scientists at Laser Zentrum Hannover e.V. (LZH) have now succeeded in producing optics that allowed physicists at Duke University, USA, to generate wavelength below 170 nanometers. The coated resonator mirrors from LZH are used in the storage ring free-electron laser (FEL) at Triangle University Nuclear Laboratory (TUNL). The highly reflective mirrors are the limiting component when it comes to achieving even shorter wavelengths with laser…

Astronomers from the Netherlands, Belgium, Chile, the USA and Germany have imaged the newly discovered exoplanet “YSES 2b” right next to its host star. An international research team with the participation of Dr Markus Mugrauer from the Astrophysical Institute of Friedrich Schiller University Jena has succeeded in the direct imaging of a young exoplanet. The planet orbits the Sun-like star YSES 2, which is about 360 light years away and located in the constellation Musca (the Fly) in the southern…

– barely distinguishable from the original … Especially for blind or visually impaired people, computer applications that read texts aloud are already a great help in everyday life. Even when driving, people have long since become accustomed to the friendly voices from the navigation system, which save drivers from dangerous distractions. Naturally, the new technology also harbors dangers. The Institute for Information Systems at Hof University of Applied Sciences is conducting a study to determine the acceptance of artificially generated…

In recent years there has been an exhaustive study of red dwarf stars to find exoplanets in orbit around them. These stars have effective surface temperatures between 2400 and 3700 K (over 2000 degrees cooler than the Sun), and masses between 0.08 and 0.45 solar masses. In this context, a team of researchers led by Borja Toledo Padrón, a Severo Ochoa-La Caixa doctoral student at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), specializing in the search for planets around this…

New clues discovered in quest to unravel astrophysical mystery. Since fast radio bursts (FRBs) were first discovered over a decade ago, scientists have puzzled over what could be generating these intense flashes of radio waves from outside of our galaxy. In a gradual process of elimination, the field of possible explanations has narrowed as new pieces of information are gathered about FRBs – how long they last, the frequencies of the radio waves detected, and so on. Now, a team…

Telescope launching this autumn could spot biosignatures on other planets within three days. Research shows that a new telescope could detect a potential signature of life on other planets in as little as 60 hours. “What really surprised me about the results is that we may realistically find signs of life on other planets in the next 5 to 10 years,” said Caprice Phillips, a graduate student at The Ohio State University, who will share preliminary findings at a press…

International research team shows how carbon-based nanostructures can get a new functionality – research results are presented in the magazine Nano Letters. Scientists have already been able to demonstrate that graphene nanostructures can be generated by annealing of a nanostructured silicon carbide crystal for a few years. “These two-dimensional, spatially strongly restricted carbon bands exhibit a vanishingly small electrical resistance even at room temperature. They are thus ballistic,” explains Prof. Dr. Christoph Tegenkamp, Head of the Professorship of Solid Surfaces…

Physicists have spent 20 years trying to more precisely measure the so-called “magnetic moment” of subatomic particles called muons. Findings published this week call into question long-standing assumptions of particle physics. Since the 1970s, the Standard Model of Physics has served as the basis from which particle physics are investigated. Both experimentalists and theoretical physicists have tested the Standard Model’s accuracy, and it has remained the law of the land when it comes to understanding how the subatomic world behaves….